spade1

a tool for digging, having an iron blade adapted for pressing into the ground with the foot and a long handle commonly with a grip or crosspiece at the top, and with the blade usually narrower and flatter than that of a shovel.

2.

some implement, piece, or part resembling this.

3.

a sharp projection on the bottom of a gun trail, designed to dig into the earth to restrict backward movement of the carriage during recoil.

verb (used with object), spaded, spading.

4.

to dig, cut, or remove with a spade (sometimes followed by up):

Let's spade up the garden and plant some flowers.

Idioms

5.

call a spade a spade, to call something by its real name; be candidly explicit; speak plainly or bluntly:

To call a spade a spade "use blunt language, call things by right names" (1540s) translates a Greek proverb (known to Lucian), ten skaphen skaphen legein "to call a bowl a bowl," but Erasmus mistook Greek skaphe "trough, bowl" for a derivative of the stem of skaptein "to dig," and the mistake has stuck.